| 摘要 |
Apparatus for a pipe-lined raster image processor (RIP), that is capable of driving a printing engine at a high rate illustratively for use in an image management system. Specifically, this RIP contains a bus and a number of separate image processing components such as a scaler, a decompressor and various interface circuits. Each of these components is connected to the bus and is capable of undertaking a respective image processing task substantially in parallel with those undertaken by other of these image processing components. In addition, a arbiter is also connected to the bus. The arbiter, typically a microcomputer system, receives a request, from any one of the image processing components (the source component), for service, from another one of the image processing components (the destination component). Then, depending upon the availability of the bus and the destination component, the arbiter defines a data path over the bus between the source and destination components, and thereafter initiates an information (typically data) transfer over the bus and between these components. Once this transfer is complete, the destination component is then able to undertake its respective image processing task substantially independent of the tasks undertaken by both the arbiter and the source component. At this point, both the arbiter and the source component are free to perform other image processing tasks while the destination component is performing its respective task. This pipe-lined operation substantially and advantageously increases the throughput of the RIP.
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